Self-Portrait
It was a sunny day in Coimbra. The pretty young girls from art school, young in so many ways that I shall never be again, were carrying their huge sheets of drawing paper and dutifully preparing to do their thing. "Why so big?" thougt I, my sheet of paper was thin, cheap, and small, just as unimportant as myself, just as unassuming as the strap on the sandal on my foot, which seemed a fitting subject, on such a gentle sunny day, instead of the big statue or the imposing buildings of the University, or the long stairway at its base, called the "monumental" by the locals, which I accidentaly insulted once by running to the top of it with my luggage on my back and asking a student where were the big stairs everybody talked about. These are them, he growled. Not so monumental now, littered with broken glass from last night's drunken students idea of forgetting frustration and examinations gone bad. Why, indeed, so big? Oh, on another day I'd wish them even bigger, perhaps. But on that sunny morning I'd be happy to sit under the shade of a single blade of grass.
Time passed. Spanish tourists arrived on tour buses, the girls eventually left unnoticed. Silence returned, and was replaced by the growling of my stomach. Such a beautiful sunny day. Such a pretty world. I realized my foot had got a tan.
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